Editor's Note: This piece is a follow-up to an old post I did, exploring how the portrayal of women in the first two Metro games fell flat. That post was sadly lost when I lost control of my old blog. Luckily, since then Metro: Exodus has come along and finally given me an Anna worth caring for.
Metro 2033 and Metro: Last Light were games for men, about men. The men were almost all one dimensional, but that didn’t bother as acutely as the bad representation of women. In the first game, the only woman you have a meaningful interaction with is a prostitute who mugs you. So, not exactly progressive.
Metro Last Light redressed the lack of representation, but it didn’t do it the right way. On the one hand, you get a female love interest, Anna, who, for all her faults, has her own personality. On the other hand, her personality is repulsive. She treats Artyom like dirt for most of the game and is actively pushing the player to kill an innocent being. Her switch from antagonist to love interest is so abrupt and unappealing that I actually groaned aloud when I realized we were going to have a sex scene.
The issue here isn’t that the Metro: Last Light developers were just bad writers. The character of Pavel is compelling, funny, and likable. I honestly would have preferred if Pavel had been the love interest over “checking-all-the-boxes-edgy-but-pretty-Anna.” And the Metro team wouldn’t have had to be so daring as to give Aryom a male love interest - they could have just gender swapped him, given us Paulina, and we would have been good to go. But, well, Anna is what we got.
So I was a bit nervous starting Metro: Exodus. Despite the generally positive reviews, knowing that Anna was a major character felt like setting myself up for more terrible love scenes and badly rendered fan service. Much to my surprise, though, Anna held up well as the heart and soul of the game.
Granted, Exodus!Anna is almost nothing like her Last Light self, with the exception of being a formidable combatant and devoted to her father. But I feel like the radical break is only to the good. This new Anna might be the most compelling love interest in a FPS since Half-Life 2’s Alyx Vance.
The whole game benefits from the slower pacing and more focus on characters. As the PC Gamer review noted, the group on the train feels like a “family,” and you get a chance to develop those relationships as much as you want to. It’s an approach to characterization I want to see more games try.
The funny thing is, Anna probably isn’t all that complex or well rounded in absolute terms. The game barely passes the Bechdel test. And there are still some unfortunate representations of women here. Is Anna a rich, three dimensional heroine ready for a prestige TV show? Not really. But she stands in such stark contrast to the terrible representation of women in previous Metro games - and FPS’s in general - that it feels like a revelation. The relationship with Anna provides an essential mirror for the voiceless protagonist Artyom and anchors the player in the world. You want to be a good person, because that’s what she sees you as.
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